CFIUS Update: Regulations Require Mandatory Filings For Certain Critical Technologies; Process Of Identifying Emerging Technologies Begins

When it was enacted in August 2018, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (FIRRMA) overhauled the US law governing CFIUS national security reviews for the first time in 11 years. Many of FIRRMA's most significant changes, however, await implementing regulations or other action by the Trump Administration before going into force, a process that likely has been stalled due to the US Government shutdown. This CFIUS update focuses on what has been done to date.

In October 2018 regulations, CFIUS took the first step in implementing some of those FIRRMA provisions that were not effective immediately on enactment. The new rules, set up as a pilot program expiring in March 2020, implement two game-changing provisions of FIRRMA by extending CFIUS jurisdiction to certain non-controlling foreign investments in certain US critical technology businesses, and by subjecting those investments, whether controlling or not, to a mandatory shortform CFIUS